As Seen in Vanity Fair's August 2006 Issue!
As Seen in US News & World Report's September 11 Fifth Anniversary Issue!
As Seen in Time Magazine's September 11, 2006 Issue!
As Seen in Phoenix New Times' August 9, 2007 Issue!

Sunday, September 30, 2007

Jim Henson, Honeybees and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Not to mention the 9-11 Giza connection. And it all makes perfect sense! That is, if you drop a couple tabs of acid, man.

Mikey Metz Responds

I am truly sorry that my actions as a “truther” deeply upset you. It was never my intent to spread lies about what happened on 9/11. Like all truthers, I truly believed I was doing the victims a favor by asking those questions. But, I was wrong to do so without doing my own research. I cannot imagine the torment caused to a family member of a Flight 93 victim, for instance, trying to be told that it was shot down or there was no plane to begin with. It’s completely wrong to try to downplay the heroism of these victims, by saying that “boxcutters are a joke” or the “let’s roll” remark was just a govt. psy-op to invoke patriotism.

As far as putting more effort toward “countering my lies,” I’m really torn. As mentioned earlier, those guys are still my friends and I just can’t picture myself following them around and discrediting them as they’re handing out their pamphlets. My hope is to attempt to show them the light, but some of them are so invested into it, I’m not expecting too much. For now, I’m going to try and stay consistent with this blog to take down the real culprits—the heads of the movement who are lying.

That's just a superb response, and one that I have no trouble accepting. You know one obvious sign that Mikey wasn't really cut out to be a "Truther"? It's that he writes so clearly and cogently, with none of those misspelled words, none of that cutesy "cuz" for because, no unformed thoughts. That's pretty rare in someone his age and even rarer among the blackshirts.

He's apparently got a response coming for Dylan, and I am looking forward to that greatly!

Saturday, September 29, 2007

How Can You Tell It's a Ron Paul Appearance? Look for the Blackshirts!

This post is somewhat OT, but here's a discussion of a Ron Paul event in Chicago:

A man in an "Investigate 9/11" black t-shirt was walking up and down the aisles handing out fake dollar bills with Dick Cheney's face where Washington's should have been. In the corner of the bill, instead of a dollar amount, it read "9-11." Above the picture, where it should have read United States of America, it read "Unmask State Sponsored Terrorism."

And:

It does, however, make for fun political theater. A Ron Paul rally is stage of characters. There's the aforementioned guy wearing the black 9/11 t-shirt who tells me he supports Paul's call to do away with the Federal Reserve. (For the record, Paul does not endorse the idea that 9/11 was a conspiracy.) Beside him is the young financial broker volunteering his time for the first real political experience of his life, because he likes Paul's promise of "sticking to the Constitution." The only thing they have in common with each other, it seems, is their passion for Dr. Paul, and that seems to be enough.

You know, the black shirt thing has always bugged me, precisely because it is so easy to caricature. But maybe black shirts are the only thing you can get these modern-day Goths to wear?

Friday, September 28, 2007

The Continuing Disintegration of Webster Tarpley

It's actually quite amusing to watch him surround himself with thorough nutters like Captain Eric (Jews run Hollywood) May, and Morgan Stack, and think that this is somehow improving his position. They're trying to figure out who Jenny Sparks is (jeez, Web, you should read Screw Loose Change, or Nico's bloglines), and fruitcake May claims she must be part of some disinfo cell.

Osama Bin Laden's Mentor Not a Troofer

I missed this last weekend; thanks to emailer "Boot Hill" for pointing it out. Turns out that even those whom Osama followed condemn him for his actions:

In his statement, al-Oadah holds bin Laden personally accountable for the occupation of Muslim lands in Afghanistan and Iraq, the displacement of millions of Iraqis and the killings of thousands of Afghans, and for deluding young Muslims and tarnishing the image of Islam and Muslims all over the world.

"Are you happy to meet Allah with this heavy burden on your shoulders?" al-Oadah asks bin Laden. "It is a weighty burden indeed - at least hundreds of thousands of innocent people, if not millions [displaced and killed]. And it is all because of the 'crimes' perpetrated against civilians by bin Laden's Al Qaeda on 9/11."

Never before has bin Laden been subjected to this sort of censure from a Salafi scholar, and especially from one who cannot simply be dismissed as a vessel of the ruling regime. Al-Oadah's record of defiance of the Saudi royal family speaks volumes for his independence and moral courage.

Kevin McPadden Expands His Story (and the Conspiracy)

Everytime this guy talks about his "witnessing" the collapse of WTC7 he adds to the story. Now, not only is the FDNY and the Red Cross involved (he specifically accuses them this time) but so is journalist Amy Goodman.

McPadden got the impression that the Red Cross official had been ordered not to give the first responders a warning that the building was coming down.

"And you heard - boom, boom, boom," said McPadden, describing the sound of bombs tearing down the building.

McPadden explained that the reason Democracy Now host Amy Goodman and others were captured on video (watch above) running from the scene and reaching stationary onlookers as the building started to collapse is that they were able to hear the full countdown on the radio further own the street.

Later in the interview, McPadden reveals how he witnessed up close steel beams from the twin towers that had been symmetrically cut at perfect angles as is shown in this image - a clear sign that explosives were used. McPadden said that officials were acting very suspiciously and subsequently prevented people from getting near the beams.

He also highlighted the fact that "vicious security" was quickly set up around certain areas of ground zero and that people were barred from accessing certain areas for no reason and also had their cameras confiscated.

Everytime he talks, he adds details. At this rate by Christmas we will hear about how he saw Larry Silverstein running from the building screaming "Pull it, pull it now!"

On a related note, Kevin "stalker" Barrett confronts that very same Amy Goodman at a public event. Disappointingly Ms. Goodman does not confess to being part of the mind-numbingly large vast conspiracy. Barrett does go up and asks her to sign a book afterwards. Not one of Goodman's books, but "Painful Questions" by prominent anti-Semitic conspiracy kook Eric Hufschmid.

UPDATE: I am not sure why Barrett is being so polite to her, since last year he had already accused her of being part of the cover-up and threatened her with hanging:

Amy Goodman WAS THERE during the Pre-announced Demolition, Complete with Countdown, of WTC-7

Since then she has participated in the treasonous media cover-up of the 9/11 inside job, accepting over $100,000 from the CIA-disinfo-disseminating Ford Foundation to "report on the aftermath of 9/11."

Amy, you will one day find yourself on the scaffold, condemned to hang alongside the other Goebbels-style traitors and mass-murder-coverup-conspirators from the corporate media you pretend to criticize.

They, at least, make no pretense of being anything but shills for the powers that be--which makes your crime infinitely worse than theirs.

Your silence and lies about 9/11 have murdered over half a million Iraqis and destroyed Constitutional governance in the USA.

This Made My Day!

One of the founders of the University of Albany's 9-11 Truth Group steps down:

My "change of heart" didn't happen overnight. This has been a process that has been eating away at me for the past month and a half. I wanted to act strategically as far as "coming out" as a means to perhaps transition the 9/11 Truth group on campus to one that was less focused on strictly 9/11-related issues (aka more truthful ones). However, I was exposed to something that truly angered me deep down in the wee hours of this morning, which I'll get to later. I was so outraged that I can no longer keep my mouth shut.

For whatever reasons at the time, I no-showed the 8/11 truth action our group was doing in Albany. Instead, I watched a movie called Screw Loose Change. I expected it to point out a few corrections in some minor details of the film. To my surprise, it contested just about every claim in the entire movie. I was a bit shocked.

I was a true believer of all this controlled demolition nonsense for a time. I never cared about the physics or the claims of pseudo-"experts." What always did it for me was the fact that there was never a decent response to any of these questions by the government. Even the hit pieces you'd see on 9/11 were always personal attacks. The mainstream never contested the actual "facts" movies like Loose Change presented.

Or so it seemed. After watching Screw Loose Change, I delved into the world of 9/11 Truth debunking. Among my favorites are the Screw Loose Change Blog and 9/11 Myths Finally, someone was answered all these pertinent questions with something that was a bit foreign to me... facts agreed upon by the experts.

Kudos to Mikey! As I mentioned in a comment, this has got to be a very tough decision to make, given the amount of time and credibility he's invested in the Movement. But the smartest people in the world make mistakes; like Mikey, they acknowledge them and move on.

I am going to have a smile on my face all day from this. Kudos to Markyx who started the process of change, and The Doc, whose Screw 9-11 Mysteries was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Dramatic 9-11 South Tower Footage

A new video has surfaced; our buddy Jay pointed to this in the comments yesterday, but it disappeared by the time I could clear some space on this computer to watch it. It's about 13 minutes long and appears to start around 8:56 AM on 9-11. The cameraman is standing between the Post Office and WTC 7 about midway through the footage when Flight 175 impacts the South Tower. Unfortunately because of the location they do not get any footage of the plane or the fireball, but they do get the tremendous noise and the sound of large chunks of debris falling around them, which is obviously quite frightening.

There are several shots of the jumpers; that footage doesn't get any easier to watch. Because of the proximity of the camera you really get a feel for how fast those bodies were falling.

Lots of profanity, appropriate but maybe not safe for work. Some of the kooks seem to see something in the North Tower fire just before the plane hits; another points out the rather ironic "Manhattan Demolition" garbage truck that appears at one point.

Rosie Gets Invite to Hang With The Terrorists

"We welcome Rosie O'Donnell to stay among us and to get to know the truth from being here," says one Ala Senakreh, the West Bank Chief of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terrorist organization, to WorldNetDaily.com's Aaron Klein. Aqsa is a Palestinian wackjob outfit that claims to have killed hundreds of Israelis in multiple suicide bombings since 2000.

Ro, of course, made serious waves when she told Elisabeth Hasselbeck and the "View" audience that people shouldn't "fear the terrorists" because they're "mothers and fathers," and has pushed the conspiracy theory that the collapse of WTC 7 was engineered by the government. "When it comes from persons like Rosie, who you say is respected, it takes a more serious significance. I guess she knows what she is saying," says Senakreh.

Of course, there is one problem; they don't know Rosie's, um, personal life:

The terrorists interviewed stated they had never heard of O'Donnell, a former host of ABC's "The View," who made regular headlines with her heated political battles against conservative-leaning co-host Elizabeth Hasselbeck. Klein told the terrorists O'Donnell was a high profile television personality and read to them a series of her political statements, with which they mostly agreed.

Here's Another Scoop for the New York Times

The Times has a sad story today about a woman who supposedly survived the impact of Flight 175 and escaped the South Tower, but whose fiance died in the North Tower.

As a matter of history, Ms. Head’s account made her one of only 19 survivors who had been at or above the point of impact when the planes hit. As a matter of emotion, her story deeply moved audiences like college students to whom she spoke and visitors at ground zero, where she has long led tours for the Tribute W.T.C. Visitor Center for visitors including Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and former Gov. George E. Pataki.

“What I witnessed there I will never forget,” she told a gathering at Baruch College at a memorial event in 2006. “It was a lot of death and destruction, but I also saw hope.”

Much of Ms. Head’s account was posted on the Web site of the World Trade Center Survivors’ Network, a nonprofit organization for which she served as president and as point person for corporate donations.

But no part of her story, it turns out, has been verified.

As you can probably guess, it certainly appears at this point that Ms Head was not in the Towers and in fact had no boyfriend who died there.

But this sort of fraud is not unusual. In fact, currently there is a young woman presenting herself as a relative of a victim, and using that status to harass Mayor Giuliani. Sabrina Rivera likes to present herself as a family member, as in this video:

She and her friends use her "family member" status to gain access to Ground Zero during the memorial services, and to deflect criticism of her harassment of Mayor Giuliani:

But, as you can probably guess, she is not in fact a family member. Her ex-boyfriend's father was a fireman who died on 9-11.

Must Be Pretty Lonely There By Yourself

I cracked up reading Jon Gold's manifesto over at 911 Blogger. While I understand his sentiment, he is fooling himself if he thinks this doesn't exactly describe 99% of the actual movement. Some choice excerpts:

The 9/11 Truth Movement I belong to doesn't invite individuals with a known history of disruption, and promotion of questionable, crazy sounding theories to speak at 9/11 Truth conferences.

The 9/11 Truth Movement I belong to doesn't promote information provided by individuals with a known history of disruption, and promotion of questionable, crazy sounding theories.

The 9/11 Truth Movement I belong to doesn't promote theory as fact. "A missile hit the Pentagon", "Flight 93 was shot down", "Controlled Demolition brought down the towers and building 7."

The 9/11 Truth Movement I belong to always promotes the best information possible, and understands the value of pointing out inconsistencies in what we were told.

The 9/11 Truth Movement I belong to understands that the information we promote should be well researched, well sourced, and stands up to scrutiny.

The 9/11 Truth Movement I belong to doesn't promote debunked theories, or debunked information after said theory or information has been debunked.

The 9/11 Truth Movement I belong to does not consist of people who obtain all of their information from a movie, and instead, consists of people that have taken the time to read and do their own research.

The 9/11 Truth Movement I belong to consists of people that understand incorporating controversial causes (Holocaust Revisionism, Anti-Zionism, UFO Study, Moon Landing Research) into our already controversial cause does not help our efforts.

The 9/11 Truth Movement I belong to doesn't single out any particular religion as the culprits behind the 9/11 attacks.

More Myths From Kevin Barrett

Earlier Kevin Barrett termed the Holocaust a "hideously destructive myth", but it is apparent that is not the only established fact that he considers a myth. From his radio show yesterday:

We lie to ourselves, partly because we want to believe things that make us feel good. We want to believe things that make me feel like I am the best, I am the good guy. That happens at every level, like these big national myths like Pearl Harbor and the myth of World War II, the heroic good fight, to commercials that try to cast you in the role of someone who is having fun on the beach drinking Coke with scantily clad women playing volleyball, “if you buy a Coke that is where you will be!” And we all want to believe that crap.

Uhh, yeah.... The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which killed over 2,000 people, is the equivalent of a Coke commercial. You do realize that you are completely insane, right?

In this show Barrett interviews "Clunkity clunk" Sofia of 9/11 Mysteries fame. I swear, listening to her would make more sense if I were smoking a joint and listening to old Pink Floyd records in the background:

Sofia: You know, somebody told me recently that, you know, he felt that we were trying to do the hundredth monkey thing. Right? Critical mass. He said we are at the 99th monkey. So why can’t we get to the hundredth monkey? Why is it so hard?

Barrett: Where is monkey number 100 anyway?

Sofia: And I told him, “From the 99th monkey to the hundredth monkey is not one monkey. It’s the consciousness leap”.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Kennebunkport Nuttery Continues

Jeez, if only we could be as effective as Webster Tarpley has been at dividing the Truther Movement into two camps! A new, very slick cartoon has been produced:

(Click on that to see it full-size)

Apparently Tarpley's minions want the Troofers to believe that Cosmos, Woolsey, Arabesque and Jenny are all in the pay of Chip Berlet and the Ford Foundation, and getting their marching orders from the FBI.

The Kennebunkport Warning was and is a well-stated, timely message to a groggy but searching American public on the dangers our country and world now face. Even if the signers weren't clear on what the warning really said, the fact that it was assigned Hoax Status on the internet when it was a very supportable document, with masses of evidence far in excess of the cited Yuval Aviv story, meant that Tarpley and Marshall immediately felt sabotaged, although there is still some uncertainty about where that actually comes from.

On the subject of LaRouche, I have never seen a more complex situation reduced to such an unbelievably useless caricature as Mr. LaRouche and his network. Anyone who has actually taken the time to read their intelligence reports from around the world, their analyses of philosophical, political and financial situations and their work on the cultural infiltration by the CIA into the postwar era would never for a moment reduce their value to zero even if there are grave problems with their tactics, other positions or egos.

LOL! But it gets even better; Imgstacke over there has some recollection of Lehrman's contributions to the collected wisdom of the planet; this piece over at Rense:

The Absolute Best Authentications Of The Protocols Of Zion

Yep, hell of a reference there, Webster!

Update: Nico points out in the comments that Lehrman is the original "Butter Brain".

“I was thinking, perhaps it is possible for an object to pass through a hole and make a hole smaller than itself. Say for example, a semi-soft object hit a slightly harder object. Imagine that the semi soft object is a long butter stick, and the slightly harder object is a piece of plastic or so. Is it not possible that the butter, when hitting the plastic could fold at the outer edges and slip through a hole that was not as large as itself? “

“An object can in fact pass through another object and make a hole smaller than itself, in particular if the object is softer than the one it is passing through, and in particular if the object is measured lengthwise, and subsequently bends as a result of impact.” Leland Lehrman

Who Did It?

Last month Loose Change "researcher" Jason Bermas commented in an interview that the "Inside Job" 9/11 attacks could have been carried out by less than 50 people. Others in the truther community evidently disagree with him, because someone has founded a website called whodidit.org which lists 103 conspirators so far.

Of the 103 people named on the list of Suspected 9-11 Criminal Coconspirators there are:22 current or former members of George W. Bush’s White House (21.4%); 4 current or former members of Congress (3.9%); 6 current or former FBI agents or officials (5.8%); 6 current or former CIA agents or officials (5.8%); 6 current or former officials of New York (5.8%);12 current or former high-ranking USG military commanders (11.7%);13 current or former USG officials (not included above) (12.6%);12 current or former members of PNAC (11.7%);16 consultants, lobbyists, or members of a “think tank” (not including PNAC) (15.5%);12 engineers (11.7%);34 current or former corporate executives (33.0%); 4 senior “statesmen” (3.9%); 5 members of the Bush family (4.9%); 1 Canadian (1.0%); 1 Pakistani (1.0%); 2 Arabs (1.9%); 2 Brits (1.9%); 4 known or suspected Mossad agents (3.9%);14 people who hold “dual citizenship” (13.6%); and

That Peer-Review Process Over At Journal of Nine-Eleven Studies

Doesn't seem to be working (what a shock!). Dr Frank Legge submits an incredibly weak paper purporting to prove that WTC 7 came down by controlled demolition. It's short (five pages including a page of footnotes), spurious and contains almost no factual material. But even the Troofers found boneheaded mistakes:

The statement that the fires did not break windows on the north side of WTC7 is wrong, as can be clearly seen in this video. Hoffman and Griffin get this wrong too.

If the professor is aware of the fact that no plane hit Building 7, why would he use jet fuel in his arguement (sic)? It's a crossover quote from WTC 1 & 2 research, not the result of independent study.

The secondary fuel load in WTC 7 has been attributed to DIESEL fuel that was in a ConEd back up generator storage tank housed in the building.

This isn't dis-info, but it's weak research. Better clean this paper up if you plan on going anywhere with it. We don't need any built-in Straw Men.

I haven't read the whole thing to the end yet, but from what I have read one gets the impression that defenders of the official theory resort to a "fire alone" argument. Of course, NIST is likely to postulate both structural damage from falling debris and fire as the cause.

The Troofer Wars: Dylan Avery vs. William Rodriguez

The splits in the troofer ranks continues, this time in this incredible thread on the Loose Change Forum, where Dylan Avery blames William Rodriguez for the Mark Cuban theater deal falling through.

Mark Cuban and Charlie Sheen

Nobody was supposed to know about that until the time was right. Thanks to William Rodriguez telling the NY Post all about it, the deal with Cuban was sunk within a week, and Charlie still hasn't gotten back to us with feedback on the cut we sent him. He just got syndication of Two and a Half Men, so maybe that's what's more important. It's his life, not mine.

Rodriguez then responds saying that it was not his fault, and that he would have appeared in Loose Change: The Final Cut, but Dylan would not share the money. Apparently Rodriguez was even trying to sell the testimony of other witnesses for money. Amazing.

I did know about Charlie Sheen because they told me as they did many other people in the conference, in fact by the end of the conference, everyone was talking about it. Specially very impressed girls that were there. Cuban? I did not know who he was or that he was involved at all. The first time I heard his name was on the post article, never even followed sports before-except for boxing . Now I gather you are either Jason or Korey - because you have been quiet since april-so I will address this directly. You were bragging about the money and budget to "certain" people. I was very happy for all of you and even facilitated many interviews. In my case, I told them ( you ) that if this was going to be a movie release and not an internet effort, the rules of the game changes and that I, my organization should be compensated, in exchange I will give you the rights to the testimony and also unique exclusive videos of my 20 years working on the Towers. Finally, access to many of the eyewitnesses that are waiting to testify that were never interviewed before. Not a bad deal, isn't? I helped broker your interview with April Gallup asking you to set up some kind of Scholarship or help fund for her as well. You agreed. I had the calls from Erick still saved talking about the need for the interview and agreement on basic terms. we also agreed that a porcentage of the proceeds should go to help first responders. Very loable.

So why would I kill a project like this???!!!

Absolutely not.I even gave him Dylan peak of interviews coming up.

Once again, it's all about the money.

Also William Rodriguez comments on this thread on JREF, which is well worth checking out.

Update: The forum administrators have deleted the original thread, but luckily I saved it. Here is a screen capture of the original comment that started this drama.

Ironically, someone started a thread to ask about the original thread's disappearance, and an administrator closed that one. And they call us fascists.

Monday, September 24, 2007

Kennebunkport Fiasco Continues to Divide the Kooks

I enjoy this rundown of the entire nonsense over at Winter Patriot. It appears to be for the most part factual if deranged. For an example of the latter, WP describes the dustup between the 9-11 crackpots and the Peace Movement as involving one side which he calls the "Paranoid Lunatics". Now you and I might say, oh, that's obviously the Troofers, right?

Nope.

You just can't put the Paranoid Lunatics in with the Conspiracy Theorists and expect them to stay there. As a matter of half-joking convenience, I refer to the anti-Iraq-war people, the election-reform advocates, and every other single-issue or narrow-focus dissident group which doesn't want to talk about 9/11 as Lunatics because they think if they play their cards right they will be granted serious credibility by the mainstream media any day now. And I call them Paranoid because of their apparent belief that they will jeopardize such imminent credibility if they consort with Conspiracy Theorists, those disreputable types who don't believe the official government explanation of what happened on 9/11.

Like I say he does run down the issues well, but obviously with an axe to grind as well. Webster Tarpley does no wrong in this version of events. And that whole Lyndon LaRouche thing gets swept under the rug:

[A]s I've said all along, who cares who he used to work for? What matters is what he's saying now, and whether it makes sense. We don't have time to argue about who people used to work for. We have to consider what they're saying and doing right now.

And of course at least two other figures in the middle of the whole Kennebunkport mess are also former (or present) LaRouchees:

Bruce Marshall who actually collected the supposed signatures cited LaRouche's foreign policy nuttery when he was running for Congress as the Green Party candidate from Vermont. In 2006, not in 1997, when Tarpley claims he was forced out of the LaRouche organization.

So okay, now we've got three LaRouche kooks at the center of this incident, including two of fairly recent vintage and one who claims to have been booted out of the organization a decade ago.

Hat Tip to Nico's bloglines which divulges some information about our old buddy Jenny Sparks, like her real name. Jenny also draws one of the inevitable charts showing who's connected to whom. For what it's worth I think Jenny's been basically right throughout this affair but like all kooks she mistakes some fellow kooks (Fetzer and Nico for example) for operatives.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

White Guys Can't Rap

As If Dan Rather Didn't Have Enough Problems

Dan Rather is suing his former employer, CBS, and some of his ex-bosses, for $70 million. This catches the attention of one of the Troofers:

I suggest we question, hound, and hassle Dan Rather to investigate and cover 9/11 Truth in his new show Dan Rather Reports on HDNet which is owned in part or entirely by Mark Cuban. Who for those of you who don't know at one time agreed to produce Loose Change: Final Cut for theatrical release in America. Dan Rather is also in the news lately for finding some balls and standing up for the truth of his story about George Bush's military years. He is currently suing CBS for something like 70 million and according to him wants to restore the principles of investigative journalism back into the news industry. Suing CBS like this is probably not winning him too many friends and I agree it takes a lot of courage for someone like Dan Rather to go through with something like that. Anyhow. I figure now is as good a time as any to reach out to him and encourage him to investigate the 9/11 Truth Movement and steer him towards the more credible researchers in our movement.

Of course, anybody who remembers Rathergate knows that "the truth of his story" was that the documents provided were false. Fake but accurate was the term of art that Kenneth used as I recall.

Now that I think about it, he'd probably fit right in with this movement. I suggest faxing him "proof" from the Abilene Kinkos.

Saturday, September 22, 2007

MyDD Posts 9-11 Fruitcake Diary

I suppose the rules aren't as stringent over there as they are over at Kos. It's Joel Hirschorn, who's a newly minted nutbar, having only recently joined Richard Gage's crew.

The 9/11 truth movement is stronger than ever, though it is generally derided by politicians and ignored by the mainstream media. It is fueled by people passionate about alternative explanations to the official 9/11 story. Understandable, considering that the co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission admitted: "We were set up to fail."

Typical retarded Troofer; apparently he can't be bothered to actually read the book by Kean and Hamilton, in which they say that despite being set up to fail, they actually succeeded. I can understand while Joel doesn't crack the book, but does he really think nobody else will?

In 2006 Time magazine said: "The population of [the 9/11 truth movement] is larger than you might think. A Scripps-Howard poll of 1,010 adults last month found that 36% of Americans consider it `very likely' or `somewhat likely' that government officials either allowed the attacks to be carried out or carried out the attacks themselves. Thirty-six percent adds up to a lot of people. This is not a fringe phenomenon. It is a mainstream political reality."

No, it's a fringe phenomenon, as anybody who watches these idiots recognizes pretty quickly. If it were really something like 36% they'd get tens of thousands to their rallies. As we discussed only a couple weeks ago, the Zogby poll commissioned by 911Truth.org revealed that only 4.6% of the population is MIHOP. That number seems about right. Joel mentions that poll, but like all the kooks, fails to mention that particular poll result.

This year Zogby found that 31 perecent of likely voters do not buy the official 9/11 story [72 percent for ages 18 to 24 and nearly 60 percent for Hispanics and singles]; 51 percent still await a congressional investigation of Bush's and Cheney's actions before, during and after the 9/11 attacks [88 percent for ages 18 to 24 and 77 percent for Hispanics and singles]; and 67% fault the 9/11 Commission for not investigating the anomalous and still unexplained collapse of World Trade Center building 7.

It's disappointing to see the 9-11 fruitcakes not getting the scorn they deserve from a major liberal blog like MyDD.

You Can't Tase This!

Change Kooks Confront Greenspan

Hilariously, they use as "evidence" a rant that Bernie Sanders, the only socialist in Congress, delivered about how the US economy is terrible and getting worse, especially compared to Scandinavia, which Sanders adores. Of course, that Sanders would take away their gun rights (he rates a C- from the NRA) doesn't seem to occur to these kooks.

Friday, September 21, 2007

Yet Another Distinguished Scholar Joins the Fruitcakes

Hoo-boy, they sure do attract the weirdos. The latest 9-11 JAQer is Clyde Wilson.

Can we judge that the official government story of what happened on 9/11 is unreliable?

We know that politicians lied about the sinking of the "Maine," Pearl Harbour, the Gulf of Tonkin, Waco, and Iraqi WMD. This administration has engaged in more systematic and frequent deception of the public perhaps than any other in recent times. And has been successful at it because the public has never been more ignorant and the media more craven.

He is the M.E. Bradford Distinguished Chair of the Abbeville Institute, an adjunct faculty member of the libertarian Ludwig von Mises Institute, and an affiliated scholar of the League of the South Institute, the research arm of the League of the South. In 1994 Wilson was an original founder of the League of the South. The League of the South is a Southern nationalist organization whose ultimate goal is "a free and independent Southern republic."

The Southern Poverty Law Center has listed Wilson among the "ideologues" of the Neo-Confederate movement, claiming that he told Gentleman's Quarterly in 1998 that "We don't want the federal government telling us what to do, pushing integration down our throats...

You know, it's getting to the point where if new 9-11 Deniers emerge, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist and anti-semitic hate groups, is the first place to check for information on them.

Waterboy Wonder Ryan Debunked

An emailer named John Randall Ray put this together this terrific debunking of a video featuring the Waterboy Wonder himself, Kevin Ryan:

One among the “next batch” of 9/11 denier videos is a short clip, slowly gaining in popularity, available under the title “pancake theory debunked – by NIST !!!” In its short (2:22) span, it seeks to debunk the idea that the WTC collapsed as a result of internal damage caused by heat – a familiar claim, of course. However, this one does so by using a CT tactic that has been around since the Warren Commission report: pulling quotes, in some cases single sentences, out of context, ignoring their meanings, changing the references they make, and otherwise distorting their actual intended meaning.

This video features a one Kevin Ryan, who was reportedly fired by the NIST after becoming a famed “scholar for 9/11 truth,” though no correlation has been factually demonstrated. Indeed, he’s featured prominently on the famous 9/11 denier site, “patriotsquestion911.com.”

As with all other “quote-pullers,” as I call them, this person knows perfectly well that what he’s saying isn’t true, or, at least, is wildly misleading. Hopefully this article will help people understand that, when a conspiracy theorist gives you a report from a quote, it is almost ALWAYS out of context. In short, this person is being deliberately disingenuous with his information. Let's go through his quotes in order:

"None of the recovered steel samples showed evidence of exposure to temperatures above 600' C for as long as 15 min" (180).

He actually leaves out all the relevant information in this quote - the rest of the paragraph states:

"This was based on NIST annealing studies that established the set of time and temperature conditions necessary to alter the steel microstructure. These results provide some confirmation of the thermal modeling of the structures, since none of the samples were from zones where such heating was predicted" (180-181).

This "suspicious lack of heat" is entirely intentional. This sentence is referring to the control group of the experiments used, and to show the predictive power of the collapse hypothesis. There is no way one could have read this information fully and not known this (read the whole report yourself). So we know right off the bat this person isn't being honest with his information. Let's go to his next quote:

"Only three of the recovered samples of exterior panels reached temperatures in excess of 250 'C during the fires or after the collapse. This was based on a method developed by NIST to characterize maximum temperatures experienced by steel numbers through observations of paint cracking (NIST, p.181)."

Sounds like there's a conspiracy afoot! Oh, wait...Lets look at the sentence that comes immediately after this quote:

"Perimeter columns exposed to fire had a great tendency for local buckling of the inner web; a similar correlation did not exist for weld failure" (181). Let's keep going:

"For the perimeter columns struck by the aircraft, fractures of the plates in areas away from a welded joint exhibited ductile behavior (necking and thinning away from the fracture) under very high strain rates. Conversely, fractures occurring next to a welded joint exhibited little or no ductile characteristics.

[...]

"The failure mode of spandrel connections on perimeter panels differed above and below the impact zone. Spandrel connections on exterior panels at or above the impact zone were more likely to fail by bolt tear out. For those exterior panels below the impact zone, there was a higher propensity for the spandrels to be ripped off from the panels. This may be due to shear failures as the weight of the building came down on these lower panels. There was no difference in failure mode for the spandrel connections whether the exterior panels were exposed to fire or not.

"With the exception of the mechanical floors, the perimeter column splices failed by fracture of the bolts. At mechanical floors, where splices were welded in addition to being bolted, the majority of the splices did not fail.

"Core columns failed at both splice connection and by fracture of the columns themselves.

"The damage to truss seats on perimeter panels differed above and below the impact zone in both towers. The majority of recovered perimeter panel floor truss connectors (perimeter seats) below the impact floors were either missing or bent downward. Above this level, the failure modes were more randomly distributed.

"In the floor trusses, a large majority of the electric resistance welds at the web-to-chord connection failed. The floor truss and the perimeter panel floor truss connectors typically failed at welds and bolts" (181).

This person wants to convince you that it's impossible for fire to have destroyed all the steel... because he also wants you to forget that this steel also had to support twenty or so floors and tons of steel, all by itself. He also wants you to think that these "recovered samples" refer to WTC 1 in general, so that you don't actually get the facts yourself in which case you'd realize that those three are only samples from areas not presumed to have collapsed as a result of heat. They buckled under the pressure and mild heat damage, nothing more. This person is inventing claims so he can address them personally.

Let's go to his last, and most outrageously egregious, example of a "quote":

"The results established that this type of assembly was capable of sustaining a large gravity load, without collapsing for a substantial period of time relative to the duration of the fires in any given location on September 11" (143).

He forgets, of course, the two or so preceding sentences:

"The Investigation Team was cautious about using these results directly in the formulation of collapse hypothesis. In addition to the scaling issues raised by the test results, the fire in the towers on September 11, and the resulting exposure of the floor systems, were substantially different from the conditions in the test furnaces. Nonetheless, the results established that this type of assembly was capable of sustaining a large gravity load without collapsing, for a substantial period of time relative to the duration of the fires in any given location on September 11" (143).

And, on the next two pages, in summary of these facts and in summary of the rest of the experiment:

"Structural steel and concrete expand when heated. In the early stages of the fire, temperatures of structural members in the core rose, and the resulting thermal expansion of the core columns was greater than the thermal expansion of the (cooler) exterior walls. The floors also thermally expanded in the early stages of the fire. About 20 min after the aircraft impact, the difference in the thermal expansion between the core and exterior walls, which was resisted by the hat truss, caused the core columns' loads to increase. As the floor temperatures increased, the floors sagged and began to pull inward on the exterior wall. As the fires continued to heat areas of the core that were without insulation, the columns weakened and shortened and began to transfer their loads to the exterior walls through the hat truss until the south wall started to bow inward due to the inward pull of the sagging floors. At about 100 min, approximately 20 percent of the core loads had been transferred by the hat truss to the exterior walls due to weakening of the core, the loads on the north and south walls had each increased by about 10 percent, and those on the east and west walls had about a 25 percent increase. The increased loads on the east and west walls were due to their relatively higher stiffness compared to the impact damaged north wall and bowed south walls.

"The inward bowing of the south wall caused failure of exterior column splices and spandrels, and these columns became unstable. The instability spread horizontally across the entire south face. The south wall, now unable to bear its gravity loads, redistributed these loads to the thermally weakened core through the hat truss and to the east and west walls through the spandrels. The building section above the impact zone began tilting to the south as the columns on the east and west walls rapidly became unable to carry the increased loads. This further increased the gravity loads on the core columns. The gravity loads could no longer be redistributed, nor could the remaining core and perimeter columns support the gravity loads from the floors above. Once the upper building section began to move downwards, the weakened structure in the impact and fire zone was not able to absorb the tremendous energy of the falling building section and global collapse ensued" (144-145).

In fact, if this person had read even the opening abstract of the NIST report into this matter, he would know that he was wrong:

"6.13 MEASUREMENT OF THE FIRE RESISTANCE OF THE FLOOR SYSTEM

“As described in section 5.4.7, the composite floor system, composed of open-web, lightweight steel trusses topped with a slab of lightweight concrete, was an innovative feature. As further noted in Section 5.6.2, the approach to achieving the specified fire resistance for these floors was the use of a SFRM. Documents indicated that the performance of the composite floor system of the WTC towers was an issue of concern to the building owners and designers. However, NIST found no evidence regarding the technical basis for the selection of insulation material for the floor trusses or for the insulation thickness to achieve a 2 hour rating. Further, NIST has found no evidence that fire resistance tests of the WTC floor system were conducted" (141).

He's trying to compare the wrong effects to the wrong parts of the building, under the wrong conditions and affected by wrong environmental detriments.

There is simply no way that the person who made this video could honestly believe what he's saying, because he gets completely refuted by his own arguments within pages of making them. He knows very well that what he is saying is incorrect. In short, this person is being blatantly dishonest. Looks to me like another "Scholar for 9/11 Truth" has been shown to be what he is: a Liar for 9/11 Distortion.

(Pat speaking again: Ryan's clearly not the sharpest knife in the drawer, so it's certainly possible that his mistakes come from stupidity. But I'm always more suspicious when somebody makes an error that helps their case; it's sort of the reverse corollary to the old principle that an admission against one's own interest is highly credible testimony.)

The Truther Wars Continue

The Truther Wars continue, with Webster Tarpley striking back at his perceived enemies, which he believes are supported by the Ford Foundation:

The following scurrilous attack constitutes a declaration of war by the Ford Foundation, the flagship foundation of the US ruling elite and the foundation most engaged in the suppression of domestic political opposition, against the Philadelphia Platform of July 4, 2007, and the Kennebunkport Warning, published on August 26, 2007. These documents can be viewed at actindependent.org. The author of the following screed is the slimy character assassin Chip Berlet, the leading figure of Political Research Associates of Massachusetts, an entity which, according to published accounts, received some $325,000 in funding from the Ford Foundation between 2002 and 2006.

This article represents a strategic decision on the part of Berlet's Ford Foundation paymasters that the Philadelphia and Kennebunkport documents represent a threat to the political hegemony of the financier elite who are betting on synthetic terrorism, new false flag operations, and a nuclear attack on Iran to clear the way for totalitarian rule in the US. The Ford Foundation is now committing considerable resources, not just to maintain the US peace, impeachment, and anti-globalization movements in their current fragmented and ineffective form, but also specifically to sabotage the Philadelphia and Kennebunkport initiatives.

Now I was aware that Tarpley used to be a follower of felon and perennial presidential candidate Lyndon Larouche, but this is the first time that I recall him talking about it.

Instead, Berlet suggests that I am a sock-puppet for LaRouche. LaRouche drove me out of his organization in 1997, more than ten years ago. I have nothing in common with LaRouche, whose supporters have repeatedly slandered me, albeit in terms slightly different from those used by Berlet. LaRouche is a border guard for the sinister Hillary Clinton-Rahm Emanuel neocon warmonger machine in the Democratic Party. He is currently trying to combine that with the notion that Bush is a force for peace with Putin's Russia ­ a manifest absurdity, since Bush is promoting aggression against Russia in the form of a nuclear first-strike capability. Contrary to what Berlet writes, LaRouche has no commitment to 9/11 truth and has contributed nothing to the 9/11 truth movement. LaRouche has rather sponsored a personality cult complete with a youth movement which is a parody of Chairman Mao's Red Guards of the mid-1960s.

Who will next be called out as an enemy of the people? As I have long maintained, the favorite book of the truthers should not be Orwell's dystopian novel 1984, but his parody of Soviet Communist paranoia and backstabbing, Animal Farm.

(Mostly) Sensible Article on the Nutbars

I have to admit that I do this with some trepidation. I can already feel the assault on my inbox. But after a good long think about potential time and energy being lost by our entire community to senseless and ultimately inconsequential musings, I have to come out and say it: the alternative theories about 9-11 are wrong. Worse, the endless theorizing and speculation about trajectories, explosives, military tests, fake airplane parts and remote control navigation actually distracts some of our best potential activists from addressing the more substantive matters at hand.

I suspect that last part is wrong unless the antiwar community really lacks for pimply guys in black shirts who can stare at YouTube videos for hours. But he inevitably goes off the rails here:

In fact, the most logical conclusion I can draw from the existing evidence is that 9-11 theorists are themselves covert government operatives, dedicated to confusing the public, distracting activists from their tasks, equating all dissent with the lunatic fringe, and provoking the counterculture’s misplaced belief in the competency of its foes. That’s the real conspiracy.

Never ascribe to malice that which can be chalked up to stupidity. Still, a mostly good discussion of why the crackpots are wrong.

Thursday, September 20, 2007

The Unified Kook Theory

Lee, over at the Post Political Blog, discusses UFOlogist Alfred Webre and his attempts to marry Area 51, Chemtrails, 9-11 Denial and Depleted Uranium into one gigantic conspiracy theory:

But for Webre, there isn’t much that’s hypothetical about it at all. He argues quite definitively that there is an established universal extraterrestrial superstate known as the “Universe society,” which has placed the earth under a protected political quarantine, in service of a grand social experiment of some sort. Furthermore, our political institutions here on Earth, are actually holographs of this extraterrestrial civilization’s federal structure.

Donn de Grand Pre Returns

Several times I have asked the quesion of who exactly Donn de Grand Pre is. He claims to be a retired Army colonel, former OSS officer, and military insider who counts Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs Generals Shelton and Pace among his personal friends. When asked by Popular Mechanics Shelton and others Grand Pre claimed that he knew, stated they had never heard of the guy.

His name pops up again on the Veterans for 9/11 Truth mailing list (I still can't believe they haven't kicked me off yet), with one of their members asking about the guy (who is also listed as a member of the group), because apparently he had bought one of his books, and received several faxes that Grand Pre sent to General Pace. Note that Grand Pre sent them, not General Pace, which proves absolutely nothing. If you would like I could show you several e-mails I sent to my good friend Jessica Alba...

In any case, this is supposedly (somewhat dated) information from one of the faxes:

There may have been an attempt to arrest Dick Cheney when he departed Sidney, Australia. There was a shoot-out aboard the aircraft when US special forces making the arrest were attacked by Cheney's security goons. As yet, unknown number were killed.

Cheney's 757 took off and flew 3,500 miles to Singapore where re [sic] refueled, then departed for Oman, another 3,500 miles from Singapore. He is then depicted this morning shaking hands with Pres. Musharraf of Pakistan; and shortly, he leaves for Afghanistan to talk with Karzai.

I next spot Seymour Hersh this morning being interviewed by Wolf Blitzer of CNN, talking about Hersh's new article in the New Yorker (March issue), wherein Hersh is discussingthe US military plans for attacking Iran. A big question, apparently,is whether Israel will join in the attack.

Now, check your world atlas for the Middle East. Locate Israel, then Iraq and Iran, Problem is over-flight for Israeli F-16's and the need to get US clearance for use of IFF so the Israeli jets can get a straight-line pass over Iraq to the targets in Iran. Iraq, being a sovereign nation, will not share the IFF codes with Israel.

Why Oman? A likely out-of-the-way place to dispose of the bodies.

Apparently, Cheney concocted another reason. The Israeli jets would dog-leg the aerial path to the targets in Iran and fly over Oman, which gives approval to share the IFF codes with Israelis, all arranged beforehand between the USAF and the Omani government.

Major problem at the moment is that the Israelis and the neo-cons and Dick Cheney, the VP, want to strike Iran, whereas, the PRESIDENT must make the ultimate decision for the attack.

Question: Is Dick Cheney the ultimate "decider" instead of George Bush? We know now that the Join [sic] Chiefs, meeting in secret in the Tank, have already decided that such an attack will not be tolerated. At least five of the JCS - all 4-stars- have stated that if such an order is given, all of them will resign, and/or give the orders for "Plan C" (the counter coup).

The Oman thing is bizarre. For starters, does anyone really think that if Israel were to bomb Iran, the Iraqi airforce would stand in their way? Obviously the US Air Force has the IFF codes for Iraq, or hundreds of flights a day would be getting shot down. If you look at a map of the Gulf region, you will see that passing over Oman would only cut a few miles off of a ridiculously long trip around the Arabian Peninsula.

And don't even get me started about the Special Forces shootout on board Cheney's plane...

I was rather curious about the other three names listed besides Pace's. I couldn't find two of them, but Colonel Dick Niemela is apparently, big surprise, a member of the Christian identity movement.

As I have discussed before, Grand Pre has ties to Holocaust deniers and anti-Semites like the American Free Press and the Barnes Review. I actually managed to find a copy of his book "Barbarians Inside the Gate" on-line. (No way in hell am I paying for it). To no surprise two prominently listed sources in the footnotes are the aforementioned Barnes Review, and its associated Journal of Historical Review. The book as a whole is pretty bizarre, with chapters titled "FDR's Bloody Road to Bolshevism" and "Nazi-Zionist Secret Alliance". Oh yes, another towering intellectual figure in the truther movement.

Attention, Titanic Passengers, Deckchairs Are Now Available...

I've been enjoying tremendously the continuing disintegration of the Truther/Peacenik Alliance that was forged between Webster Tarpley and Cindy Sheehan, among others. Back in July, Webster was pushing this newfound alliance as the only way to expand the cadres of the 9-11 kooks; now Tarpley is referring to Sheehan as a "miserable human being."

If you've been enjoying this story as much as I have, you'll love this post over at 9-11 Blogger. Basically, Tarpley and a couple of his LaRouche buddies are on the outs with the folks over at 9-11 Blogger; I would remind them that I was flogging the attempted LaRouche take-over of the 9-11 Cult ages ago.

Unfortunately, Mr. Tarpley again ignored his own advice, when on September 6th, 2007 he renewed his attacks on the "Dahliar 4". On his radio program, Mr. Tarpley again used his platform to attack those who claimed that they did not sign the KW, but this time his derogatory rhetoric included ad hominem attacks on me, Cosmos and truthaction.org, Arabesque and his website, meticulous 9-11 researcher Jon Gold, and blogger "Col. Jenny Sparks".

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Interesting Spin

You have got to love the spin that truthers put on their failures. We have been discussing how despite numerous promises of 3,000+ theaters and $20 million production budgets, Loose Change V 4 will only be released on-line and via DVD, just like the first 3 versions. From this hilarious thread on the Loose Change forum though, one of their regular fans tries spinning this in a positive light.

Trailer this weekend?

YES!

This is awesome news, I knew it was coming to DVD On the 11th but I guess they are going to stick to the old ways and also allow it ready for viewing on the internet to prove they aren't in it for the money.

But I'll be sure to buy one!

Thanks for this! I did not know that. :)

Uhh, yeah. They are releasing it on the Internet because they are not in it for the money. It has nothing to do with the fact that they couldn't get any theaters to show their crappy movie and this is the only way they can promote it. Yeah, that's the ticket.

But for only $100 you can be first in line for a "free" copy of the DVD... of a movie that you can just watch on the Internet... for... uhh... free... a month earlier.

Once again we learn why Dylan Avery flunked out of high school economics.

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

The Troof is Out There

The Weekly Standard covers the troofer events in New York last week. Needless to say this is probably not the type of coverage they were hoping to get.

Attendance was sparse. Despite warnings to get tickets in advance in order to assure a seat, Cooper Union's Great Hall was at perhaps 25 percent of capacity on the first day. Even fewer showed up on the second day. Truthers varied in age, but the uniform of the event seemed to be T-shirts sporting slogans like "9/11 was an inside job!" and "Impeach Bush." Devotees of Lyndon LaRouche were staked outfront of the premises, warning that the ideas contained within the literature were "heavy, important, man." The LaRouchies seemed to realize they weren't welcome at the event, but it's hard to think that the sermon they were preaching was any more outlandish than, say, that of Alfred Webre, who was given 45 minutes to talk on the topics "9/11 as a war crime" and the "development of [an] international tribunal" for the Bush administration. After touching on those subjects (to great applause), he veered off course, arguing that an "artificial intelligence matrix" controlled by the Rothschild family might have caused 9/11, that the cancer rate in Iraq now stands at 30 percent, that AIDS is a biological weapon created to control the population, that global warming is being caused by a black hole 23 light years from Earth, and that the NYPD was employing a supersonic crowd disruption device that was depressing turnout.

Opinion Turning Against Fruitcake Andrew Meyer

So, he cut in line, kept asking question after question, resisted police when they tried to shoo him out (and yes, I do think it was appropriate for security to move him on since his mike had been cut off), kept resisting and making a ridiculous scene, kept fighting after they decided to arrest him, kept on struggling even after they pulled out the taser, and then finally got tased.

A Kossack:

It's a shame that they had to taze the guy, but he had a chance to calm down and didn't take it. He probably didn't pose a physical threat to anybody in the room, but someone can't just hijack the floor of a forum like that and expect not to get kicked out. This wasn't some poor guy who was brutalized for trying to ask some tough questions. He's just an obnoxious guy who had a fit when there wasn't time for his questions and refused to be calm even when he was given the chance to speak. He was looking for trouble, and everyone applauded when he was forced to leave.

...there was a long line of people waiting to ask questions, and Meyer was near the back. He rushed up to the mic, butting up past many, many kids and making a scene. Apparently he’d been talking with the police and they were arguing long before Meyer ever got to the mic (reports from Florida are that they threatened him with arrest already). That’s why there are police in the video when you first see it.

I just called the University of Florida Police Department at (352) 392-1111 to ask them for the names, home addresses and phone numbers of the officers who assaulted the young man. I was, of course, refused. The next step is to put out a call to everyone in or around the University of Florida to help us identify these officers and find out where they live. Their home addresses will be posted as soon as they are available and the website is up, and people in the area will be asked to show up to picket in front of their homes until these officers are fired and prosecuted for assault.

WHERETHEYLIVE.ORG will also seek and post home addresses of suspects in the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on 9/11 and during the 9/11 wars. Each posting will include a summary of the evidence that the individual has seriously abused his or her power over others, along with the home address and a call to nonviolently picket that address.

Reverend Rich Lang in Seattle

The Seattle troofers have been becoming more prominent. In this short clip one of their more prominent members, the Reverend Rich Lang of Trinity United Methodist Church calls the administration the "Whores of Babylon" among other things.

Tased Florida Student Was Troofer

I assume you've all seen the video of this. According to Alex Jones (always reliable!), Andrew Meyer, the screaming student, was a 9-11 fruitcake.

Another detail left out of press reports is Meyer's political affiliation - he is not a Neo-Con who was attempting to put John Kerry on the spot as Fox News has tried to portray - he was a 9/11 truther. Meyer links to the 9/11 Mysteries documentary from the home page of his website.

Actually the movie he links to appears to be Zeitgeist, but the point remains the same.

Update: Some writing samples here. Oh, the irony, get this part from a column he wrote about a ranting preacher on campus:

I, along with dozens of other unwitting passers-by, was witness to a peculiar trend over the summer. Every other day or so at Turlington Hall, the students just let out of class, myself included, were privy to the preaching of a young man standing in the middle of the square, telling us all about the glory of Jesus Christ at the top of his lungs. Pretty much everyone just went about their business, albeit somewhat bemused, and ignored what he had to say.

Me, I was searching for his soapbox. But the purpose of this column isn't to comment on his message. I'm not even going to complain that someone else was trying to impose his own religious beliefs on me. No, the problem I have is with the man's methods. Obviously, he wants to spread the word about this Jesus fellow, in case some of us hadn't already heard about him. But our friend the preacher couldn't find a better way of speaking to the masses than doing literally just that - addressing all of the college students on their way to lunch?

Update: This video shows a little better his continuing resistance at the back of the theatre, even after the cops had wrestled him to the ground:

Monday, September 17, 2007

One Problem the Young Troofers Have

Is that they don't know their history. Check out this video of the Seattle kooks in New York City:

At about 8:25 remaining, the kid says:

"Foreign policy? Nothing you're going to find in a newspaper or anything like that but between 1989 and 1992, we decided to give Osama Bin Laden $20 billion to fight the Russians in Afghanistan...."

Well, he's right about one thing; that's nothing you're going to find in a newspaper or anything. Remember, this is presumably edited video from a whole week's worth of kookery, and the first thing out of his mouth is a stupid lie. For starters, the Soviet/Afghanistan war ended in early 1989, although it was effectively over before that. The US didn't fund Osama bin Laden; this has been debunked by CNN.

We get more disinfo from one of Luke's troops with about 6:25 to go as Tim Myer describes WTC-7 as a "48-story building", and instructs them to look up John Schroeder's claims (apparently unaware that Schroeder has nothing to say about WTC-7.

Tom Foti raves for a bit about the microchips in our arms with 5:25 left. At this point I'm thinking we've got a classic self-debunking video. And Foti delivers; somehow David Rockefeller is behind it all because dundundun he built the buildings in the first place.

So Sheldon, Have You Stopped Accusing Firefighters of Lying?

Sheldon Drobny pans Bill Maher's quite good comments about the 9-11 nutbars, and steps into the firefighters' wheelhouse.

By focusing only upon the controlled demolition theory of the Twin Towers, he excluded a more viable discussion of the collapse of building # 7 that was not hit by anything but the debris from towers 1 and 2.

As I have put it in the past, a lot of the crackpots seem to think that WTC-7 is the Gateway Drug to 9-11 Denial. Gee, it seems so harmless to engage in a little speculation about controlled demolition at WTC-7. After all, nobody died there, so you're not pissing on graves like you are when you talk about the Towers.

But that doesn't buy them a free pass, because in order to buy the CD of WTC-7, you've got to claim that an awful lot of firemen were lying. Firemen like:

Edward Kennedy:

"But this is as the day was going on and, of course, there were so many transmissions going over. I remember him screaming about 7, No. 7, that they wanted everybody away from 7 because 7 was definitely going to collapse...."

Lieutenant Rudolph Weindler:

"Captain Varriale told Chief Coloe and myself that 7 World Trade Center was badly damaged on the south side and definitely in danger of collapse. Chief Coloe said we were going to evacuate the collapse zone around 7 World Trade Center, which we did."

Firefighter George Holzman:

"We stayed there for quite sometime when I don't even know who, I think it was someone, Lieutenant Lowney spoke to, asked us to leave the area, they were concerned about 7 World Trade Center collapsing."

Firefighter Kevin Howe:

"At that time there was a lot of fire going on. I think it was the Customs House was roaring. The 7 World Trade Center was roaring."

Captain Robert Sohmer:

"As the day went on they started worrying about 7 World Trade Center collapsing and they ordered an evacuation from that area..."

Assistant Chief Harold Meyers:

"Chief Nigro directed me to continue monitoring conditions at the site. Specifically to monitor number 7 World Trade Center. We were very concerned with the collapse potential there, and to do whatever I could do to ensure site safety in that no additional people became injured."

Firefighter Fred Marsilla:

At this point, 7, which is right there on Vesey, the whole corner of the building was missing. I was thinking to myself we are in a bad place, because it was the corner facing us. But you do what you got to do as usual. We operated till they finally started pulling people back.

Firefighter Adrienne Walsh:

Then we were instructed to search through two or three buildings to make sure they were stable, and then they pulled everybody out because of the pink building. Was it 7 World Trade, that was going?Q. Right.A. Then they pulled everybody out.

Firefighter Kevin Quinn:

Then approximately I guess maybe two hours before number 7 came down, we went into Ground Zero and helped dig around and was there when they located Chief Feehan and one of the Chiefs pulled us all out because they said 7 was going to come down.

Captain Anthony Varriale:

At that time, other firefighters started showing up, Deputy Battalion Chief Paul Ferran of the 41 Battalion, and James Savastano of the First Division assigned to the Second Battalion showed up and we attempted to search and extinguish, at the time which was small pockets of fire in 7 World Trade Center. We were unaware of the damage in the front of 7, because we were entering from the northeast entrance. We weren't aware of the magnitude of the damage in the front of the building. We made searches. We attempted to put some of the fire out, but we had a pressure problem. I forget the name of the Deputy. Some Deputy arrived at the scene and thought that the building was too dangerous to continue with operations, so we evacuated number 7 World Trade Center.

Firefighter Vandon Williams:

It could have been an hour, hour and a half we were doing that before we were ordered to move away from that part of Tower No. 1 because there was an imminent danger of collapse of World Trade Center No. 5 and 7.

Firefighter Eugene Kelty, Jr.:

And 7 World Trade was burning up at the time. We could see it. There was concern. I had gone up to take a look at it, because I knew that the telephone company building, which is 140 West Street, was next to 7 World Trade Center, and there was a concern that if 7 World Trade came down, what would happen to this building?

Firefighter Richard Banaciski:

They told us to get out of there because they were worried about 7 World Trade Center, which is right behind it, coming down. We were up on the upper floors of the Verizon building looking at it. You could just see the whole bottom corner of the building was gone. We could look right out over to where the Trade Centers were because we were that high up. Looking over the smaller buildings. I just remember it was tremendous, tremendous fires going on. Finally they pulled us out. They said all right, get out of that building because that 7, they were really worried about.

Chief Frank Cruthers:

Early on, there was concern that 7 World Trade Center might have been both impacted by the collapsing tower and had several fires in it and there was a concern that it might collapse. So we instructed that a collapse area ?Q. A collapse zone?A. Yeah -- be set up and maintained so that when the expected collapse of 7 happened, we wouldn't have people working in it.

Warnings: Operation Bojinka

In keeping with my new determination to debunk the "real" 9-11 Truthers, not these strawmen inside-job kooks, I will be taking a closer look at some of the "warnings" the US government supposedly had prior to 9-11.

Operation Bojinka was a plot hatched by Ramzi Yousef (who had executed the WTC bombing in 1993) and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (who plotted the 9-11 attacks). The plan was for Yousef and others to board the first leg of two-leg flights to the United States, getting off at the first stop and leaving behind bombs that would destroy the planes over the Pacific.

Reportedly a second phase of the plot would involve renting a light aircraft, loading it with explosives, and crashing it deliberately into CIA headquarters in Langley, VA. Others have claimed this later plot included plane crashes into the WTC, Sears Tower, and the Library Tower in Los Angeles.

However, the man who reportedly extracted this second phase of the plot from a Yousef associate, Chief Superintendent Avelino Razon of the Philippines' police, indicates otherwise is this September 14, 2001 article:

"When we interrogated Murad, he mentioned that he was a skilled pilot, trained in the US, in Afghanistan and also here in the Philippines, who was recruited to undertake a suicide mission," Razon said.

"He was committed to ... fly a plane and ram it into some targets," Razon said, adding that information from a laptop computer seized from Murad indicated one target was CIA headquarters. "There was mention of about a dozen" trained pilots to be recruited for such attacks.

"I didn't imagine that they would ram a 757 aircraft into the World Trade Center. I thought the suicide mission [would involve] a Cessna light aircraft loaded with several kilos of explosives, like a Japanese Kamikaze World War II pilot diving into a target," he said.

The Bojinka plot was foiled when Yousef's apartment was searched by police in the Philippines responding to a fire.

Grading:

Specificity: Operation Bojinka is hard to rate on specificity. The main part of the plan, which was ready to go operational, involved blowing up airliners, not hijacking them. On the other hand, supposedly a planned later phase involved crashing a plane into CIA headquarters, but not an airliner but a small plane loaded with explosives. However, it was a plot planned by many of the people involved with 9-11. I'm going to give it 20 of 40 possible points.

Timeliness: Another tough one to gauge. Some have argued that earlier warnings are actually more timely than warnings close to the actual event, on the basis that larger, institutional level changes could have been made. The problem with this is that it becomes more difficult to figure out who should have made the changes. Is this a warning that the Clinton Administration ignored? Should the Bush Administration have taken it up upon gaining office? I'm going to give it 10 points for timeliness.

Credibility: Not much doubt that this actual plot occurred; Yousef was sentenced to 240 years for his part. Clearly this plot receives the full 40 points for credibility.

Overall, this warning grades out at 70. Note that this number doesn't mean it's a "Low C"; the purpose of the numeric scale is to compare the relative significance of 9-11 warnings. Until we've analyzed a number of warnings, the numeric grades mean little.

Could These People Get Any Stupider?

I know the average truther has the reading comprehension of a 3rd grader with ADD, but I was still left speechless by this post over at 911 Blogger with the headline:

Jeb Bush Declared Martial Law in Florida on 9/7/01The poster then cites his evidence, from an old article on Rense.com (emphasis mine):

Sorry if I'm posting old news. I stumbled onto this on the internet and wondered how many others know about it. It seems like a pretty big smoking gun to me.

On Friday, September 7, Jeb Bush signed Florida Executive Order No. 01-261 which states, in part:"I hereby delegate to The Adjutant General of the State of Florida all necessary authority, within approved budgetary appropriations or grants, to order members of the Florida National Guard into active service, as defined by Section 250.27, Florida Statutes, for the purpose of training to support law-enforcement personnel and emergency-management personnel in the event of civil disturbances or natural disasters and to provide training support to law-enforcement personnel and community-based organizations relating to counter drug operations. This Executive Order shall remain in full force and effect until the earlier of its revocation or June 30, 2003."

Hello! It is a training bill. It says right there in the quote you posted. This has nothing to do with "martial law" it is just an emergency preparedness function carried out by the National Guards of every state in the union. Hell, I have participated in them. Did I miss martial law being declared in Washington State?

Even more amazing is the people in the comments, including that towering intellectual, Dr. Steven Jones, fail to even notice this, and heap praise on the original poster.

Sunday, September 16, 2007

How To Deal With the Kooks?

This seems to me to be what distinguishes sceptics from troofers. Sceptics should probe for "inconsistencies in the official narrative", but then apply a "balance of probabilities" test with the alternative explanations on offer. Troofers demand "proof beyond all reasonable doubt" because they already have another view fixed in their minds. Most of us already know the telltale signs when someone tells us that they are "increasingly troubled by some of the details about how many people actually died in the Holocaust" and shut the conversation down immediately. I think that we probably need to start treating 9/11 conspiracy theorists in a similar way.

Blackshirts at Ground Zero

Not Really CT-Related, But

It touches on some issues that I thought were worth talking about. The post starts out well:

I was just reading an article in my local paper about babies (now 6-year-olds) who were born on 9/11/01. The article made me tear up a little, not because of what happened in 9/11 but because of the thought that these kids were literally born on the day when our country lost its innocence.

But then goes off the rails:

They’ll never know, as I did, what it was like to travel around the world and be appreciated, rather than criticized, because you’re an American; they’ll never know what it is to travel by air or even enter the public library without a hyper-vigilant security guard scrutinizing you; they may never know a society where our Arab, Muslim, and even Sikh brothers and sisters are welcomed as fellow Americans instead of looked upon with hostility and mistrust.

Oh, boohoohoo, it's so awful that we have to be scrutinized by security guards at the airport! Note that she does not blame the hijackers for this; instead she seems to think it's an irrational reaction based on fear and prejudice:

This wasn’t caused by 9/11, but by our reaction to it; as a child I was often told that I could not choose how other people treat me, but I could choose how I react to them. The U.S. has behaved a schoolyard bully who’s been pranked by a nobody from the other side of the tracks and reacts by beating up the nobody’s friends and family.

Ah, that's what 9-11 was; just a prank! No doubt Ashton Kutcher is about to step out from behind a nearby tree to say, "Punk'd!"

Bill Maher Is Right

Friday, September 14, 2007

AA 77 Airfones, the Final Story

To finish off a story that has been long in developing, we now have the documents showing when the air phones from American Airlines 77 were deactivated. This whole saga started when David Ray Griffin, in his book "Debunking 9/11 Debunking" claimed that AA 757s never had air phones. After we pointed out that they had them, but they were removed in the spring of 2002, he corrected himself, only to immediately turn around and decide that this was too big of a concession to reality and start trying to prove they didn't exist again.

With the help of Rob Balsamo from "Pilots for 9/11 Truth", Griffin finally came up with an anonymous American Airlines' mechanic who gave him a document describing the removal of the phones, discussed here, here, here and here. The problem with the document they provided though, was that they did not show the original Engineering Change Order (ECO) removing the phone. The fact that the phones were removed was not under contention, it was only a matter of when. According to a press release by American, it was sometime after February 2002. According the the "Pilots for 9/11 Truth" it was some unspecified date before January 2001.

Well now, along with a bunch of other supporting documents, we have the original ECO (FO871)ordering the phones to be deactivated. The ECO mentioned by Balsamo (FO878), is the order to actually physically remove the components. This, of course, occurs at an even later date. (The document is unaltered by me except for additional blacking-out of personal information)

Click to enlarge.

To no surprise, the date of March 2002 matches up perfectly with the public statements of American Airlines' press release, and not, as the truthers allege, over a year. This is just when the original order was given though, this does not say when it was carried out. We have that list too though, one of which is displayed below.

All of the deactivations were done in April of 2002. Flight 77 is not among them of course, since it crashed into the Pentagon 7 months earlier.

So this should pretty much settle this story, verified from mutiple sources, including internal documents, news articles and public statements from AA77. The air phones on flight 77 had not yet been removed in September 2001. Once again David Ray Griffin, the high priest of the 9/11 denial movement is shown to be wrong. It is probably too much to hope for, but maybe someday he will realize all this and let the victims of this fatal flight rest in peace.